• Labour has called for faster and more extensive testing of meat imports. In a debate on the horsemeat scandal, Mary Creagh, the shadow environment secretary, said: "We certainly need to make sure what is coming in is exactly as it says on the label. I do think there is an issue with large quantities of horsemeat coming in from countries such as Canada and Mexico ... tonnes and tonnes of this meat coming in where there is no traceability and no guarantee about what these horses have had injected."

There's a generation of the public who have no idea about the scale and importance of public funding in the arts.

Perhaps it was because no-one felt they needed to draw attention to it, because the funding could be relied upon. Or was it, perhaps, partly out of a hesitation about drawing attention to public subsidy it in case that might jeopardise it.

But whatever the reason, go to any institution or read any programme and the names of the donors are up in lights but the contribution - the collective contribution of the taxpayer - is all but invisible. So the irony is that the cuts have been made easier because most people remain unaware of the important role of subsidy in the arts.

I think it’s right that we fight back against the cuts. Even though it’s a very difficult time because the Government's austerity programme is choking off economic growth and threatening public services. It is a difficult time. When the police are being cut, when home care support for dementia sufferers is being cut back, there is a fear that speaking up for the arts sounds like special pleading, or people not realising how tough it is out there, or that you'll be making it worse by biting the hand that feeds you.

But it's not special pleading. You are not doing it for yourselves - you are doing it for all those children who still don't have access to the arts; for the regions which will get left behind; for the opportunities it affords for economic growth; for the part it plays in our national identity.

The UK's horsemeat scandal was in "large part" the result of a switch from UK to foreign meat suppliers in 2012 caused by an abrupt change in European regulation that the government failed to contest, according to the expert who led the FoodStandards Agency's (FSA) surveillance programme for a decade.

The change meant that "desinewed meat" (DSM), a fine mince rubbed under pressure from carcasses, could no longer be called meat on packaging. DSM produced in the UK was the main ingredient in most value-range burgers, sausages, pies and kebabs and the change meant that thousands of tonnes of meat had to be sourced from elsewhere and at low cost.

"You would think it would set alarm bells ringing but it did not," said Dr Mark Woolfe, head of food authenticity at the FSA until 2009. "There was an obvious risk. The companies were seeking a low price and that is asking for trouble."

"In principle there should not be anything wrong with a company going abroad for meat, as the EU has the same rules," said Woolfe. "But in practice, the longer and more complex the supply chain, the more difficult it is to control. That is a lesson we have learned the hard way."

2.52pm GMT

Southwark crown court has been hearing the closing speech from the prosecution in the trial of Vicky Pryce, Chris Huhne's ex-wife. According to the Press Association, Andrew Edis QC, who is prosecuting, said Pryce had taken points for Huhne in 2003 because she chose to do so, not because she was coerced, and she was not someone who could be reduced to a "quivering jelly".

The position is this. One of the most powerful, talented, intelligent and trusted women in the country wishes you to think that when she took some points for her husband in 2003 she had no real choice in doing so. It is the prosecution's function, if they can, to disprove that before she can be convicted.

There's no doubt that she took his points, there's no doubt that that's a crime. It's only not a crime in her case if the special defence available to wives - marital coercion - applies in her case and it applies in her case if the prosecution fail to make you sure of two things. First, that the offence was committed voluntarily, that is to say, she had choices available to her. She had not had her 'will overborne' by pressure from her husband. He may have been trying to pressure her, he may have wanted her to do as she did, he may have been very persuasive, but that isn't what this case is actually about. The question is whether he was able, by things that he did or said, to induce in this woman a state of mind whereby she no longer was able to exercise a free choice about what she did. That is not just deciding to do something for an easy life against your better judgment which you would rather not do, because we all do that a lot of the time, not necessarily commit crimes.

Edis said the prosecution could prove that Pryce took the points because she chose to do so.

She had a real choice and she exercised it in the way that she did ... You are trying Professor Vicky Pryce, a person who is well used to taking important decisions and actually founded a company whose whole business was to give ethical advice to people who were faced with difficult decisions so that they would do the right things even when the wrong thing would be the easier thing to do. You are not talking at the time of a woman who is under the thumb of anyone, you are talking about someone who has had a brilliant career because throughout it she has made very good decisions.

2.23pm GMT

The opening speeches are now over. I'm afraid that was rather dull. Owen Paterson may have had a wobbly 24 hours, but on the basis of what I've heard in the last hour, he does not seem to be in serious trouble.

Updated at 3.05pm GMT

2.21pm GMT

Paterson says there should be more testing of food material.

He will be discussing this with the European commission and with Lord Rooker.

There will be a "lessons learned" exercise, he says.

There is a need to maintain confidence, he says. This is not helped by suggestions that the current investigations are not being conducted properly.

He says his top priority over the next few weeks will be to back the FSA and to work with EU ministers and the European Commission to restore confidence in food.

Updated at 3.06pm GMT

2.18pm GMT

Paterson says Labour used to say that food decisions should be taken by an independent agency.

There is now a independent agency, the Food Standards Agency, he says. It is run by a Labour peer, Lord Rooker. Yet Labour are now criticising Paterson for leaving it to the FSA, Paterson says.

Paterson says this is a good question. He will probably know more after his talks with fellow EU ministers over the next 24 hours.

2.11pm GMT

Jake Berry, a Conservative, says that if lasagne contains 100% horsemeat, there must be a danger of contamination from "bute".

Paterson quotes from the statement the chief medical officer made yesterday. She said "even if bute is found to be present at low levels, there is a very low risk indeed that it would cause any harm to health". Given that some meals contain only 15% meat, you would have to eat a very large amount for there to be any risk, he says.

2.07pm GMT

Owen Paterson Photograph: /BBC Parliament

Paterson says Britain has high food standards and excellent traceability.

He says that he wants to get to the bottom of this problem as soon as possible so that people are reassured that British food is always authentic.

Under the current system too much is taken on trust, he says.

Ian Paisley, the DUP MP, says people need to realise that you cannot have food that is both cheap and high quality.

Paterson says that people buying cheap food are entitled to know that they are getting what they expected. If they buy processed beef, they should get processed beef. They should get a quality product, he says.

Updated at 3.07pm GMT

2.02pm GMT

Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, is speaking now.

He says that since he made a statement in the Commons yesterday, he can now confirm that Tesco has found horsemeat in spaghetti bolognese.

He says he has a meeting with the industry later today.

Updated at 2.05pm GMT

2.00pm GMT

Creagh is winding up now.

She says Paterson waited too long to meet the food industry.

And his fragmentation of the FSA made dealing with the problem harder, she says.

1.59pm GMT

William McCrea, the DUP MP, says traceability in Northern Ireland is "second to none". The contaminated meat would not have come from Northern Ireland, he says.

Updated at 2.06pm GMT

1.58pm GMT

Creagh says yesterday Tory Eurosceptics were calling for more EU regulation in relation to food. She says this was as likely as "unicorns dancing over a blue moon".

1.56pm GMT

Creagh says blaming the Poles and the Romanians is convenient. But nothing has been found in those countries. And the chances of a horse in Romania being given "bute" are slight, she says.

Updated at 2.06pm GMT

1.56pm GMT

Creagh is now talking about abattoirs. Has the government considered the possibility that meat from abattoirs is entering the food chain?

She says it is easy to buy a microchip and make it look as if a horse has a "clean" medical history.

All horses slaughtered in the UK are now being tested for "bute" (phenylbutazone). But Paterson could have acted sooner, she says.

1.50pm GMT

Creagh says the coalition broke up the FSA.

After 2010, responsibility for "food authenticity" and food labelling was transferred to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The FSA used to have 25 officials in charge of labelling. But Defra only has 12 people working on this now, she says.

The loss of over 700 trading standards officers over the last two years has also made regulation weaker, she suggests.

1.46pm GMT

Creagh says we do not know how many of the 10m withdrawn burgers have been tested.

1.43pm GMT

Creagh says that Owen Paterson has not given the food industry the names of suspect suppliers.

Paterson intervenes. He says suppliers are ultimately responsible for the safety of their food.

Creagh says Paterson did not answer the question. She says it is not clear whether the Food Standards Agency has given Paterson the names of suspect suppliers.

1.40pm GMT

Mary Creagh Photograph: /BBC Parliament

Ben Bradshaw, the Labour former environment minister, intervenes. He says Creagh has said that she would not eat processed meat at the moment. Does she think it is wrong for Owen Paterson to say he would eat processed meat.

John Bercow, the Speaker, says there will be probably be an eight-minute limit on backbench speeches because so many MPs want to speak.

Mary Creagh, the shadow environment secretary, is opening the debate.

She says it is four weeks since the Irish authorities told the British about suspect burgers. Some 10m burgers were withdrawn.

Ian Paisley, the DUP MP, intervenes. He asks Creagh to correct a claim made yeserday that 70,000 horses are missing in Northern Ireland. Those figures related to the Republic of Ireland, he says. He says Northern Ireland meat is safe, and tasty.

Creagh says she is happy to correct the record. It was a slip of the tongue, she says. She says that, as the granddaughter of a Northern Ireland cattle farmer, she is happy to promote Northern Ireland meat.

1.19pm GMT

MPs debate horsemeat scandal

MPs are about to start debating the horsemeat scandal.

Here's the Labour motion they are debating.

That this House notes that up to 100 per cent horsemeat has been found in supermarket and branded processed meat products and that horsemeat has been found at the premises of a UK meat processing plant; notes with concern that seven horses which tested positive for phenylbutazone (bute) contamination have entered the human food chain, including one in England; further notes that meat supplied to UK prisons, labelled Halal, has tested positive for pork DNA; recognises that the Irish government and Northern Irish Executive have called in the police and specialist fraud units to tackle the problem of horsemeat adulteration; further recognises that thousands of jobs depend on consumer confidence in the UK and Irish meat industries; and calls on the Government to ensure that police and fraud specialists investigate the criminal networks involved in horsemeat adulteration, to speed up the Food Standards Agency official tests so that results are back in 14 days and restore consumer confidence in the meat industry by working with the food industry and other EU member states and EU institutions to define new testing, labelling and traceability standards for the meat industry to protect consumers from fraud.

• Theresa May, the home secretary, has said that police chiefs will be forced to disclose their pay packages and that all officers must reveal if they have second jobs under measures aimed at improving trust in the police. As the Press Association reports, a national register of officers struck off from the police will also be set up by the newly formed College of Policing, and officers will no longer be able to dodge disciplinary hearings by resigning or retiring. The move comes on the day officers from Operation Elveden - the Metropolitan police investigation into corrupt payments to public officials - made their 60th arrest.

• Robert Francis QC has rejected suggestions that his inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal led to those responsible being exonerated. As the Press Association reports, he told a Commons committee that the terms of his inquiry were to examine actions - or inactions - of organisations against a "background of the most appalling" care provided to large numbers of patients at Stafford Hospital. He said effectively putting individuals on trial by making one of the inquiry terms of reference that of identifying individuals responsible would have resulted in a number of "unfortunate" results. "Every single person involved would have instructed a lawyer, every single person would have to have been a core participant," he said. "I know some people have criticised the length of my inquiry but I would have been running this inquiry for years - the lessons would not have been learned but perhaps the most important point is that I don't think we would have found out as much as we did." But he said that his approach had not led to individuals being exonerated.

I do not believe that this report exonerates people at all, I do urge those who have not done so to read the accounts given of the history in the various chapters about the organisations, where I set out in detail what individuals have done and what they have not done, what letters they got and their reaction to these letters.

• Lord Fowler, the former Conservative cabinet minister and a former chairman of the Lords communications committee, has said that using a royal charter to oversee a new press regulatory body would be "about the worst solution". This is what he told the BBC's Daily Politics show.

I think it's about the worst solution. Let me just tell you very briefly what the guidance says about royal charters; once incorporated by royal charter a body surrenders significant aspects of control of its internal affairs to the privy council. This effectively means a significant degree of government regulation of the affairs of the body, so what one's got in fact is government regulation and no one can change it apart from the government.

The Conservatives are going to publish their plans to use a royal charter to underpin a new system of press regulation later today.

• Diane James, the Ukip candidate in Eastleigh, has said that Romanians are associated with crime and that that there should be a temporary halt on all immigration. At a press conference, she said the other parties were not willing to discuss immigration.

On the 1st of January 2014 the floodgates will open for Bulgarian and Romanian citizens [to come to Britain]. We are not just talking about pressure on services from immigration but also, and I have to say it, the crime associated with Romanians. One of the problems with the Olympics last year was the Metropolitan Police having to deal with Romanian criminal gangs pick-pocketing.

• Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB, has cancelled plans to retire early. As the Press Association reports, Kenny told his executive last year that he was planning to retire early and would like to leave at the end of 2013. But today he said that he had reconsidered. He is now set to remain in the job during the next general election in 2015.

Back in the Commons the Tory MP Robert Halfon, in a reference to the Lib Dem MP David Ward, asked Nick Clegg to condemn MPs making "inflammatory statements" about Jews. Clegg said that he was unapologetic about condemning any MP, including one from his own party, using "insensitive, provocative, offensive language" about the Arab/Israeli conflict. All MPs were "duty bound to choose their words carefully" when discussing this topic, he said.

12.15pm GMT

Volunteering and giving to charity went up in 2012, according to figures published by the Cabinet Office. The Press Association has filed a story.

Volunteering and giving to charity increased in 2012 in England, according to the first official Community Life Survey, released today. The survey also showed that almost nine out of 10 people (87%) in England believe they live in a cohesive community and almost eight out of 10 (79%) feel they belong strongly to their neighbourhood. Ministers claimed the figures were a vindication of the Government's "Big Society" agenda to strengthen civil society. Compared to the previous Citizenship Survey, numbers of people giving up their time to help others at least once a year rose by 6% from 65% in 2010 to 71% in 2012, partly as a result of events building on the legacy of the Olympic Games Makers, according to the figures from the Cabinet Office. Meanwhile, 74% of those surveyed reported making donations to charity in 2012, compared to 72% in 2010.

The Cabinet Office published the figures as David Cameron helped the Alzheimer's Society launch a drive to recruit 1 million volunteers to support people with dementia.

In the Commons Andrea Leadsom, the Conservative MP, has just asked Nick Clegg if he regretted telling Chatham House in November last year that there was "no chance" of securing a cut in the EU budget.

Clegg dodged the question, but he said that it took time and effort to secure alliances in Europe to push through reform.

11.58am GMT

Members of the Armed Forces are shown around the site of the London 2012 Olympics in east London on July 15, 2012. Photograph: LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Theresa May, the home secretary, has announced that the government has cut the amount it is paying G4S for Olympics security by £85m because the firm failed to provide enough security guards and the army had to step in to help instead. In a written ministerial statement, she said that the taxpayer was not losing out, that G4S was paying for the costs incurred by the military and that the firm was not being paid for any services it did not deliver. But it did provide 80% of the work it was supposed to provide, she said.

11.40am GMT

Nick Clegg Photograph: /BBC Parliament

It's DPMQs and Nick Clegg is at the despatch box. I'll post on it if Clegg says anything significant. The first question was about the Lords, and Clegg said opponents of Lords reforms were to blame for the government not being able to cut the size of the upper house.

11.34am GMT

Here's Francis O'Grady, the TUC general secretary, on the Poundland case.

This blows a big hole through the government's workfare policies. Of course voluntary work experience can help the jobless, and it is right to expect the unemployed to seek work. But it is pointless to force people to work for no pay in jobs that do nothing to help them while putting others at risk of unemployment.

This policy is about blaming the jobless, not helping them. Ministers should now abandon this misguided approach, and instead guarantee real jobs for the long-term unemployed, especially the young.

The court has backed our right to require people to take part in programmes which will help get them into work. It’s ridiculous to say this is forced labour. This ruling ensures we can continue with these important schemes.

We are however disappointed and surprised at the court's decision on our regulations. There needed to be flexibility so we could give people the right support to meet their needs and get them into a job. We do not agree with the court's judgment and are seeking permission to appeal, but new regulations will be tabled to avoid any uncertainty.

Ultimately the judgment confirms that it is right that we expect people to take getting into work seriously if they want to claim benefits.

From Cait Reilly, the graduate who took the case to court

I am delighted with today's judgment. I brought this case because I knew it was wrong when I was prevented from doing my voluntary work in a museum and forced to work in Poundland for free for two weeks as part of a scheme known as the sector based work academy. Those two weeks were a complete waste of my time as the experience did not help me get a job. I wasn't given any training and I was left with no time to do my voluntary work or search for other jobs. The only beneficiary was Poundland, a multimillion-pound company. Later I found out that I should never have been told the placement was compulsory.

I don't think I am above working in shops like Poundland. I now work part time in a supermarket. It is just that I expect to get paid for working.

I hope the Government will now take this opportunity to rethink its strategy and do something which actually builds on young unemployed people's skills and tackles the causes of long-term unemployment. I agree we need to get people back to work but the best way of doing that is by helping them, not punishing them. The government ought to understand that if they created schemes which actually helped people get back into work then they wouldn't need to force people to attend.